Pretty Girls

Claire’s choice.

And Helen’s, too. The last time Lydia had talked to her mother, Helen had said, “Don’t make me choose between you and your sister.”

To which Lydia had responded, “I think you already have.”

Though Lydia hadn’t spoken to her mother since, she still kept tabs on her. The last time she’d checked the Athens-­Clarke County tax records, Helen still lived in their old house on Boulevard, just west of campus. The Banner-­Herald ran a nice story when Helen retired from the library after forty years of ser­vice. Her colleagues had said that their grammar would never be the same. The obituary for Helen’s second husband mentioned that she had three daughters, which Lydia thought was nice until she realized that someone else had probably written it. Dee hadn’t made the list because they didn’t know she existed. Lydia would likely never remedy the situation. She could not bear the humiliation of having her daughter meet ­people who held her mother in such low regard.

Lydia often wondered if her family ever looked online for her. She doubted Helen used Google. She had always been a strictly Dewey Decimal kind of gal. There were so many different sides of Helen that Lydia had known. The young, fun-­loving mother who organized dance contests and Sweet Valley High sleepovers. The much-­feared, cerebral librarian who humiliated the school board when they tried to ban Go Ask Alice from the library. The devastated, paralyzed woman who drank herself to sleep in the middle of the day after her oldest daughter went missing.

And then there was the Helen who warned, “Don’t make me choose” when she had clearly already made her choice.

Could Lydia blame them for not believing her about Paul? What Claire had said at the cemetery today was mostly true. Lydia had stolen from them. She had lied. She had cheated. She had exploited their emotions. She had banked on their fear of losing another child and basically extorted them for drug money. But that was the thing. Lydia had been a junkie. All of her crimes had been in the ser­vice of getting high. Which begged the obvious question that Helen and Claire had apparently never bothered to ask: What could Lydia possibly gain from lying about Paul?

They hadn’t even let her tell the story. Separately, she had tried to tell each of them about riding with Paul in the Miata, the song on the radio, the way Paul had touched her knee, what had happened next, and they had each had the same response: I don’t want to hear it.

“Time to wake up.” Rick muted the TV when a commercial came on. He slipped on his reading glasses and asked, “What is the groundnut better known as?”

Lydia carefully rolled onto her back so the cat wouldn’t be disturbed. “The peanut.”

“Correct.” He shuffled through the Trivial Pursuit cards. They were cramming for the Westerly PTO Parent/Teacher Trivia Night. Lydia barely had two years of college. Rick had three. They took a perverse pleasure in beating the doctors and lawyers of the Westerly Chosen.

Rick asked, “Who is buried in an Argentine cemetery under the name Maria Maggi?”

“Eva PerÓn. Give me something harder.”

Rick shuffled through the cards again. “Where is the tallest mountain on earth?”

Lydia put her hand over her eyes so she could concentrate. “You said tallest, not highest elevation, so it can’t be Everest.” She made some thinking noises that caused the dogs to stir. The cat started making biscuits on her stomach. She could hear the clock ticking in the kitchen.

Finally, Rick said, “Think ukulele.”

She peeked through her fingers. “Hawaii?”

“Mauna Kea.”

“Did you know the answer?”

“I’m gonna say yes because you have no way of knowing.”

She reached up and pretended to smack his cheek.

He bit at her hand. “Tell me what your sister’s like.”

Lydia had already told him about surprising Claire at the cemetery that afternoon, though she’d left out the unseemly bit about squatting over Paul’s grave. “She’s exactly how I thought she would be.”

“You can’t just say she’s a Mother and leave it at that.”

“Why not?” The words came out sharper than Lydia intended. The cat sensed her tension and moved to the arm of the couch. “She’s still thin and beautiful. Obviously she works out all the time. Her outfit cost more than my first car. I bet she has her manicurist on speed dial.”

Rick stared down at her. “That’s all there is to her? A gym membership and designer clothes?”

“Of course not.” Lydia bristled, because Claire was still her sister. “She’s complicated. ­People look at her, and they see how beautiful she is, but they don’t realize that underneath she’s smart and funny and . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Was Claire still smart and funny? After Julia disappeared and Helen checked out, Lydia had taken over the mothering responsibilities. She was the one who made sure Claire got to school on time, had lunch money and clean clothes. She was the one Claire had always confided in. They were best friends until Paul had forced them apart.

She told Rick, “She’s quiet. She hates confrontation. She’ll walk halfway around the world to avoid an argument.”

“So, she’s adopted?”

Lydia slapped his arm. “Trust me, she was very sneaky. It might look like she was agreeing with you, but then she’d run off and do whatever the hell she wanted.” Lydia waited for another comment, but Rick held his tongue. She said, “Before the rift, I used to think that I was the only person in the world who really understood her.”

“And now?”

Lydia tried to remember exactly what Claire had told her in the cemetery. “She said I don’t know a damn thing about her. And she’s right. I don’t know Claire with Paul.”

“You think she’s changed that much?”

“Who knows?” Lydia said. “She was thirteen when Julia went missing. We all dealt with it in our own way. You know what I did, and what happened to my mom and dad. Claire’s response was to make herself invisible. She just agreed with everybody—­at least on the surface. She never caused any problems. She made solid grades in school. She was cocaptain of the cheerleading team. She tagged along with all the popular girls.”

“That doesn’t sound invisible to me.”

“I’m saying it wrong, then.” Lydia searched for a better way to explain. “She was always holding herself back. She was cocaptain, not captain. She could’ve dated the quarterback, but she dated his brother instead. She could’ve been top in her class, but she’d purposefully turn in a paper late or miss an assignment so she’d fall closer to the middle. She would know about Mauna Kea, but she would say Everest because winning would bring too much attention.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Lydia said, not because she didn’t know, but because she didn’t know a way to explain it that made sense. No one understood striving for second place. It was un-­American. “She just wanted peace, I guess. Being a teenager is so hard. Julia and I had two great parents growing up. All Claire had was turmoil.”

Rick asked, “So, what did she see in Paul? He wasn’t exactly in the margins. His obituary made him out to be a pretty successful guy.”

Lydia had seen the photo in Paul’s obit. Claire had somehow managed to put pearls on the proverbial pig. “He wasn’t that way when she met him. He was an obnoxious grad student in thick glasses. He wore black socks with sandals. He laughed through his nose. He was really, really smart, maybe even a genius, but he was maybe a five and Claire’s always been a solid ten.”

Lydia remembered the first time she’d met Paul Scott. Her only thought was that Claire could do so much better. But the fact was that Claire had never wanted to do better.

Lydia said, “She always flirted with the good-­looking, popular guys, but she went home with the geeky ones who practically slobbered with gratitude. I think they made her feel safe.”

“What’s wrong with feeling safe?”

“Because the way Paul made her feel safe was by pushing everybody else out of the way. He was her savior. He made her think that he was all she needed. She stopped talking to her friends. She stopped calling me as much. She didn’t go home anymore to visit Mom and Dad. He isolated her.”

“Sounds like a classic abuser.”

“As far as I know, he never hit her or even raised his voice at her. He just kept her.”

“Like a bird in a gilded cage?”

“Sort of,” Lydia said, because it was more than that. “He was obsessed with her. He’d look at her through the window when she was in class. He’d leave notes on her car. She’d come home and there would be a rose on her doorstep.”

“That’s not romantic?”

“Not if you do it every single day.”

Rick didn’t have a response to that.

“When they were out in public, he was always touching her—­stroking her hair, holding her hand, kissing her cheek. It wasn’t sweet. It was creepy.”